In our increasingly technologically-based society, people are communicating and collaborating with each other using their computers and computer-based devices (e.g., BLACKBERRY® hand-held devices, computer-based cell phones, etc.), collectively referred to herein as computing devices. And as people situated in remote locations from each other desire to work collaboratively, there is increasingly an interest in effective and efficient mechanisms to use, share, create and view relevant information simultaneously and also asynchronously. Thus it would be advantageous to support computing device users by providing and supporting a persistent shared environment for the users to, in an intuitive, user-friendly, manner, create, share and collaborate on relevant information.
A wiki is a known type of website that allows users to share and edit content hosted on the website. Wikis, however, are primarily textual in nature. Moreover, wikis are generally awkward to format. Additionally, wikis are document-based, and thus, rely on, and are restricted to, the flow of the document to organize and present user information.
There are also various photo-oriented websites that allow users to share, and in some cases, collaborative, on photo displays. However, existing photo-oriented websites are, as their title suggests, geared towards photo display and editing, and thus have limited usages. Moreover, known photo-oriented websites use grid-based layout schemes which do not allow for free-form layout or easy customization.
There are a multitude of scenarios in which various computing device users could beneficially employ an easily-accessible, persistent, collaborative format, such as, but not limited to, working on development projects, sharing thoughts on purchase choices, e.g., home, furniture or landscape options, collaborating on scrapbook page designs, designing a presentation, writing and illustrating a story, developing a map, creating an electronic journal, etc.